Review of maximum power point tracking techniques for photovoltaic arrays working under uniform/non-uniform insolation level

Photovoltaic (PV) energy is one of the most prominent renewable and non-polluting energy to fulfil the rising demand of electricity. But availability of sun for limited time span and low conversion efficiency of solar cells overshadow its advantages. Generally, for the maximum exploitation of power from the photovoltaic array, a maximum power point tracking (MPPT) controller is used in these systems. Different methods are available in the literature for development of MPPT controller. Majority of MPPT controllers are designed for the single peak power-voltage (P-V) characteristics. During partial shading on PV array, the resultant P-V curve exhibits multiple peaks consisting of local maxima and global maxima. During partial shading, the conventional methods of MPPT may not converge to the global maxima. In this paper, an exhaustive literature review is presented on the MPPT techniques available for PV array operating under various operating conditions.